58 Comments:

Is it just me, or is Twilight going to pull the last one out of her plot? At least I take that "The Reference Guide didn't mention anything about it, you see, so..." as in "... so I can make up whatever I want. Hmm... I'm a wizard and good at magic, so the last one is... Magic!" Though I doubt any GM would be okay with such a move.

Hmm... I wonder if the 100th page will be the last one for this episode. Would be fitting, in a way. We'll have to wait and see...

Yeah, but didn't the GM inform them from the begining that this would be a different RPG? It's possible he could come up with something interesting for each of the episodes. The whole "continue the studies of friendship" bit with Celestia could be used to do this.

Of course, since the series is non-linear, it doesn't matter which episode he does next. The only ones he obviously can't do is Return to Harmony I and II, as they have all the letters she sent the princess.

Guess for plot of ep. 3:
Twi is given the tickets and tasked with keeping them safe for herself and Spike.
Pinkie, RD, and Rarity are tasked with stealing the tickets.
AJ and Flutters are tasked with stopping the other three.
Character Development ensues?

Technically, all Season 1 episodes can be be considered chronological over the course of a year, with the only indicators being episodes that show obvious seasonal events (Summer Sun Celebration, Applebuck Harvest, Winter Wrap-Up, GGG). We could then say that chronologically, Return to Harmnony comes after that, the same summer as the GGG.

Then following the Holiday episodes in season 2, that could be considered chronological as well, though the events in between can confuse the timeline. Ultimately, Season 1 took about a year, chronologically, and season 2 appears to follow the same trend, though with less evidence.

Basically, its safe to assume the episodes are in chronological order, barring any minor details that prove exceptions.

I think the only problem with making episode 3 the next little "arc" in this comic is it would be a RP only one which this group doesnt seem to be able to do yet. I have never been in a dnd group that had a large amount of RP near the beggining

Note from the future: Unfortunately Seasons 3 and 4 both start with an episode that explicitly states the first two happened in one year, and those two seasons have too many weather-season changes to be in chronological order.

I think the sixth element in this case won't be "magic", as "magic" in the show's case is really just a way to say "friendship". Honestly, the first time I watched the scene, I was expecting the sixth element to be just that, only later realizing what the show's subtitle of "Friendship is Magic" really meant.

These are called the "elements of Harmony", not "elements of Friendship", even though Applejack calls them that afterwards. Friendship is an all-encompassing thing, a "uniting" element, but really only works through the "elements are things their bearers strive for" line of logic. In this RP campaign's case it's very appropriate though, exactly because friendship is this "uniting force" that brings the other five elements together, and in this situation, Twilight is that force. Through her, the five bearers come together, and she is the one who brings the Elements' influence forward in them.

TS: "Alright, I call upon the remaining element.. The Element of... of... ooh, of Magic!"
DM: "Wait, what? No, that's not happening. These are Elements of Harmony, not Elements of Minmaxing."
TS: "Just wait, let me jot down some notes on it. Ahem. 'The Element of Magic gives a +10 bonus to knowledge checks-"
AJ: "Whoa there, Sugarcube. You can't just give yourself such a OP piece of-"
TS: "To the OTHER members of the party when they are wielding their respective Elements of Harmony!"
RD: "Wait, what? Your Element only works to boost us, not you? Awesome!"
DM: "But, but that's just..."
DM: "... I need to do a bit of rewriting."

Funny story about a time I did a little "Creative Thinking" because the GM didn't take into account everything--

I was partaking in a Star Trek style game on board a small unaligned transport ship. My character was an android medical doctor. He essentially looked human, except for having a prehensile tail that he used as a 3rd hand for holding tools as needed.

We were at a space station refueling our ship. The player who was the ship's captain had enemes in a drug syndicate and the GM decided that the syndicate's goons would catch up with us there.
Cue the fight. My character wasn't skilled and combat (indeed, not even armed with a gun) so I tried to get back to the ship and get it started up. The GM assumed I'd have to risk running through the crossfire and getting shot, but I had a better idea.

Me: "I grab a fire extinguisher and space myself."

GM: "Um... what?"

Me: "I'm an android built on the same specs as Data. I should survive a vacuum. I grab an extinguisher, proceed through this maintenance airlock, and once outside I use the extinguisher to propel myself over there to the syndicate's ship."

GM: "Stop watching Pixar movies!!"

I did make it to the syndicate ship and overpowered the one goon onboard. After I took a hammer to the shipboard controls I floated over to our ship where we made a clean getaway while the goons had to rewire their bridge controls. :D

Heh. My reply to the DM would be that long before Pixar used it, a silly, short-run comedy program back in the 80's had a plot about a group of reject NASA astronauts using NASA's space junkpile to launch cut-rate rockets into orbit for quick bucks. As you might expect, they EVA'd with dubious reject space suits and used fire extinguishers to move around

Well, I already kind of covered the "guessing" element in my last post. So now Twilight has to come up with an inspirational speech that makes the DM allow the use of the game-breaking items of power against the Big Bad at FIRST LEVEL. Oh, here's something.

Celestia: Thank you, my little ponies. You have successfully wielded the Elements of Harmony and freed my sister of her corruption.
Twilight: I just followed your advice, Princess.
AJ: And now that the Elements of Harmony are restored, we can plow through anything in our path.
RD: Alright, that's what I'm talking about! Man, we could take on a dragon or maybe take over a rival kingdom.
DM: Princess Celestia will be taking the Elements back with her to Canterlot for safe-keeping.
RD: WHAT? But...but we're the bearers or whatever. We're the only ones who can use them, so we should be able to keep them.
PP: RD, in this setting the Elements of Harmony is the equivalent of a nuke. A freaking god-empress can't trump them, and the border kingdoms could threaten war over them if they realized their true power. No totalitarian dictator would let six civilians walk around with that kind of power unless it was a national emergency.
DM: Princess Celestia is not a...*sigh* can you at least believe she's a benevolent dictator?
Rarity: Hmph. If she was truly benevolent, wouldn't she give us some kind of reward for saving the kingdom?
Celestia: Oh, you must be Rarity, the owner of that little boutique shop. I'm sure I can give a recommendation to the upper nobility of Canterlot. Imagine, your clothing becoming the primary reference of the who's who of the upper crust.
Rarity:...Praise Celestia!

Heh. The above post about the Elements of Harmony being a nuke... The GM should just state that the Elements can only be used when the world is out of balance, and until then, even though they *are* carrying the full power of the Elements around with them, they can't actually be *used* until that condition is achieved.

It becomes a kind of hereditary power which floats around the kingdom, passing from pony to pony until it's needed. Until then, the ponies possessing them just tend to stand out a bit more than their contemporaries. But until the world is out of whack again, bringing them together actually accomplishes little.

Interesting idea. It brings to mind questions about whether or not the Elements could be used as weapons of war. They would have no societal allegiance, they merely keep the world from outright breaking. But if the Elements have the capacity to remove corrupting parts from a whole, like with NMM, could it be used on a city that condones slavery and "fix" it? Or is the Evil Empire safe so long as they don't break the world while they conquer it?

well, according to Pinkie Pie, Celestia is a totalitarian dictator, so the Elements are being used by the imperial forces to thwart an uprising. Depending on your point of view, that could be the bad guys using them effectively.

So yes, it seems as long as harmony is maintained, and anything that upsets the status quo is the enemy, the Elements can be used to mostly any end.

Which is interesting, because it paints the Elements as a totally neutral "effect". They're like a fundamental universal force. And while people like to assume these forces are inherently "good", they usually really aren't. They have no opinion, per se. As long as the fundamental underlying conditions are met, the forces in question do nothing. When those conditions are out of synch, they restore balance. A clever villain could harness this fact, if they were smart enough.

I'd compare it to the lamentable first D&D movie, where the "evil" wizard is warning the hall of wizards that if they don't stop the queen from instituting a constitution and limiting their power, she'll use the mind-control device which lets her turn gold dragons into puppets, and mash them flat.

So what happens when they oppose her? She used the mind-control rod and mashes them flat. Ironically, the wizard was absolutely *correct* in his analysis of the situation. And the queen, while *appearing* to favor democracy, is really manipulating the whole kingdom from her position of absolute authority while using the mind-control device to ensure total power remains hers, regardless of what the people think.

I'll be brave and guess that Twilight's player can't come up with what the final Element is, but that the other players come through and do it for her, and in doing so show just how much the players as well as the characters have come together as friends.

Unfortunately, I'm a mite short on stories pertaining to getting everything correct, then having to serendipitously create an answer from nowhere and that happened to be the correct answer.

((I noticed about halfway through ^that^ the amount of "smart" words I was using, and decided to commit to it.))

An update on the zombie RP. Some random person ran up to our base, obviously not a zombie, and we seriously considered just blowing their head off and being like, "You all saw that. They were infected." But I managed to convince the group that would be bad, and we offer to help her and whatever people are in this base wherever she came from.

Surprise surprise, she led us into a trap, which resolved with everyone but me in a gunfight with her and her goons. I was on the other side of a reinforced door getting out of a hallway that zombies were flooding into.
I'm fine. She got shot 4 times.

I've got loads of stories but like you, I'm saving them for when they're relevant. Otherwise, I would be quite capable to semi-spam these pages with long walls of text and I'm sure that's not the best thing to do here.

Remember, derivative comics like this only need to follow the visuals of the show in question. It could well be that the tickets in "the ticketmaster" wouldn't have anything to do with the grand galloping gala. There's no need for chronology there.

As for where Newbiespud will take the comic next... I strongly, strongly hope that - since there's just SO MUCH mlp to go around (unlike the Starwars series, which only involved several movies, not entire TV seasons) that he focuses on episodes that offer a lot of material for the comic.

I like the idea of the Ticketmaster being that Twilight comes to the session early and is chatting with Applejack... Gets the gift, and then other players start showing up.

Rarity: "I'm here, and fabulous as ever. What's going on?"

Twilight: "Oh, I got a pair of tickets to a gala where there will be lots of upper-crust people with jewels."

And, would like to clarify one thing in my above post. I'm not strongly hoping that Newbiespud will necessarily not follow the episodes in order, I'm hoping that he doesn't feel that he HAS to - if going in a different order would provide better material for the comic.

Giving Twilight a computer? The ability to make endless lists that take up no space? At least with pen and paper she has to be productive to afford materials; a computer would be giving a crack addict the keys to the drug warehouse.

Or worse, she could go mental again. Given the new capabilities, she would be overcome with a need to instill order in EVERYTHING. After filing everyone's tax returns and having planned out every annual event (for the next five years), she starts to micromanage details of her life and her friends. She starts giving "advice" to her friends about how to do their jobs better. It all comes to a head when Pinkie Pie throws Twilight a surprise "surprise party", specifically made to be unpredictable. Will Twilight carefully mark the punch glasses to show the optimum filling height? Will Pinkie Pie act refined just to act unexpected? Will cake fly through the air and short out the computer?